


fire on my tongue (ice in my veins)

by amazonziti



Category: Pearson (TV 2019), Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alpha Jessica Pearson, Alternate Universe - Teen Wolf (TV) Fusion, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, High School, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Mother-Daughter Relationship, New York City, Origin Story, Pack Dynamics, Pre-Canon, Private School, Racism, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 02:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazonziti/pseuds/amazonziti
Summary: Jessica doesn’t find out that she’s a werewolf until she’s fifteen.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. I wrote most of this back in the summer of 2012, when I was actively watching _Suits_. I don't remember exactly when I stopped watching, but it was more or less because there was never enough Jessica and/or Jessica/Harvey moments for me. I'm so excited for _Pearson_ , and hopefully all the Jessica I can handle. So I'm posting what I've got so far, very nearly seven years to the day after I started it. Hashtag finally.
> 
> Jessica's family members are completely made up, as we didn't have any canon information about them back when I originally wrote this.
> 
> Deep thanks to [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus), who went REALLY in-depth with me about this fic on gchat seven years ago.
> 
> Title is lyrics from Zayde Wølf's "Cold Blooded".
> 
> The "Teen Wolf Fusion" tag is to acknowledge that the werewolves in this fic are based on Teen Wolf S1-S2 werewolf rules. No canon Teen Wolf characters will appear in this fic. Nora Deaton was originally going to be Alan Deaton's sister, but *shrug*. For whatever it's worth, I imagined her as Christine Adams.

New York, March 1989

Jessica doesn’t find out that she’s a werewolf until she’s fifteen.

She’s in the tenth grade, second in her class at a Manhattan prep school. It’s an unseasonably warm Friday at the end of March. As they do every Friday, classes end at two o’clock instead of at four. Her satchel slung over her shoulder and her coat and scarf over her arm, Jessica follows the flood of girls downstairs into the lobby. As she’s walking through the foyer, Nora Deaton from reception calls out to her. “Miss Pearson!”

“Hi, Nora,” Jessica says, a little uneasy. Nora Deaton is one of the only black staff or faculty at the school, and Jessica is one of the few black students; the other girls stare when they talk.

“I’ve got a note for you from your mom,” Nora says. She bends her neatly-coiffed head to rummage through her desk drawers as Jessica steps up to the reception counter. “Where did I...? Oh, here we go.” She offers a letter, which Jessica folds and tucks into the breast pocket of her blazer.

“Thanks, Nora.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Pearson.” And _that’s_ never not weird, being addressed so respectfully by an adult that everybody calls by her first name like she’s a child. Jessica’s mom taught her better than that, but Jessica had gotten such strange looks from the other girls when she’d called Nora “Ms. Deaton” that she’d stopped. Jessica tries to pick her battles here, but she feels kind of gross for having surrendered this one. 

“Have a good weekend, Nora,” Jessica says.

“You too, Miss Pearson,” Nora says, and Jessica nods and escapes outside.

There’s a long line of town cars idling at the curb in front of the school; Jessica waves to a few of her classmates’ drivers and ducks out of the crowd at the front doors. She heads west on 84th Street and, as the weekend noise from the school falls away behind her, unfolds Mom’s note to read as she walks.

It’s typed on good paper printed with the school’s letterhead, with the date and time of dictation (today, 12:35 PM) marked in the upper right corner. It takes Jessica a moment to process its meaning:

> Darling,
> 
> Why don’t you ask Elizabeth or one of the other girls if you can stay with them this weekend? Your father’s come home unexpectedly and I think we’ll be caught up for a while.
> 
> Love,  
>  Mom

Jessica stops dead halfway to York Avenue, staring down at the most terrifying words she’s ever read, and tries to remember to breathe. She’s suddenly freezing, but the cold’s not like a chill; it’s fear coming from inside her, spreading up and out from the base of her spine, flooding her hips and pelvis and stomach with ice, making her bones ache. “Oh my God,” she says. It’s the sound of her own voice that gets her moving again.

The only way home is to take the bus across town, then the subway up. Jessica doesn’t have the money for a taxi, and to ask a friend for a ride -- to put them in danger of getting caught up in this -- is unthinkable. Jessica purses her lips so they’ll stop trembling. She folds the letter once more and puts it back in the breast of her blazer behind the school crest, with her crisp pocket square. She tugs at the hem of her skirt and her blazer, the strap of her satchel, shifts her grip on her coat: everything is secure. She runs.

Like a miracle, the M86 is just pulling up as she gets to the corner of York and 86th Street. She fumbles for a token, but the driver recognizes the school’s blue tartan uniform and waves her on. “Thank you,” Jessica says.

“No problem,” says the driver.

There’s an empty double seat. Jessica sits down hard, sliding her satchel and coat into the window seat, and tries to think. Mom must have seen Dad coming, somehow, and had time to call the school to warn her. Mom will need help, and the only person who knows enough to be useful is Jessica. She’ll have to be better than just vicious; she’ll have to be _smart_ , like they’ve planned, because Dad will try to use them against each other. He’s used Jessica as a hostage against Mom before, so he could have his fun and then get away.

This time, Jessica thinks, assessing the contents of her satchel, will be different. This time, she and Mom will finally kill him.

She’s got her cotton shorts and T-shirt from PE, easy to move around in, fresh from the school’s laundry. She’s got textbooks and notebooks, which are heavy and pretty useless. She’s got her keys, and she’s got sharps in a canvas pencil case: scissors and a drawing compass and, best of all, an X-Acto knife from her drafting class. 

She’s got a full bottle of water, which she opens now, bracing herself against the rocking of the bus. She slips her locket on its silver chain over her head and opens the catch with a flick of her thumbnail. When the bus jerks to a stop at Lexington Avenue, Jessica tilts the contents of the locket into the bottle of water, caps the bottle, and shakes it up as hard as she can. The dried flakes of wolfsbane dissolve almost immediately in a bloom of smoky pale blue that turns the entire bottle opaque. She stows the bottle in her satchel and puts the chain back on, hiding the locket under the starched collar of her uniform shirt.

The bus speeds through the park. Jessica gets off at Central Park West and takes the train to 103rd Street. Walking as fast as she can down 104th in the afternoon sunlight, she does her best to stay calm, breathing evenly and keeping her expression steady. She’s among friends and neighbors once she crosses Columbus, and she can’t have them worrying or stopping by to check on her and Mom. Dad’s proven before that he has no problem with collateral damage. 

Jessica and Mom’s apartment is in a grand old building between Columbus and Amsterdam, directly across the street from the Projects where they used to live. Jessica enters through the gloomy courtyard the way she usually does, but takes the stairs instead of the elevator from the lobby.

At the fourth floor landing, wrinkling her nose against the terrible smell in the stairwell and trying not to let any unclothed part of her touch the floor, Jessica changes hurriedly, slipping her shorts on under her skirt and wrestling her T-shirt on under her button-down before taking off her uniform, rolling it up tightly and stuffing it into her satchel. The bottle of wolfsbane water she sticks in her waistband at the small of her back; thankfully the elastic waistband of her gym shorts is tight enough that the bottle stays put. The scissors, compass and capped X-Acto knife she stows carefully in either side of her athletic bra, along with her keys to the apartment. The silver locket stays on. She takes her hair down from its pretty, if precarious, updo and yanks it ruthlessly into a tight bun. Some loose curls, too short to tie back but long enough to be a nuisance, fall in her face. She tucks them away with bobby pins.

Her heavy coat and satchel full of books will undoubtedly be more trouble than they’re worth if Dad’s waiting for her just inside the door. There’s really no safe place to leave them, damn it; she has no good explanation for why she’d need to drop them with a neighbor, and if she leaves them here on the landing they might get stolen -- or, worse, somebody well-meaning might recognize them as hers and try to return them to her, getting themselves killed in the process. In the end, she forces the staircase window open and stows her things on the fire escape. Hopefully she’ll live to come back and get them.

Jessica pats herself down, wiggles to make sure the water bottle is secure, and pulls the heavy door to the fourth floor open. From four she takes the rickety elevator one floor up; her element of surprise is, hopefully, in the measures she’s taken to arm herself, not in her arrival. Dad will hear her once she’s on their floor. Let him think she’s coming home from school like it’s any other day. Let him think she’s unprepared.

She slips her keys from her bra and lets them jingle as she unlocks the deadbolt, then the lock in the doorknob. “Mom?” she calls. “I’m home!”

There’s a long pause -- too long -- before Mom replies, “In the living room, honey!”

Jessica lets the door drop closed behind her, and starts down the long hallway past their bedrooms to the kitchen. Surely it’s only her own imagination that she can hear the animal rasp of Dad’s breath, the terror-quick tattoo of Mom’s heartbeat. Surely she can’t smell the new-penny tang of blood.

Somehow her own pulse is steady as anything. It feels like her arteries jump with every heavy beat. The hallway seems to flex in front of her. Jessica blinks, shakes her head; when she opens her eyes again, everything is... different. Sharper, but the colors are wrong, and the shadows look strange.

She hears noises from up ahead: flesh on fabric, flesh on flesh, bone on bone. Dad has Mom by the arm and has shaken her so hard her teeth click together, probably to stop her from trying to warn Jessica that he’s here.

“I’m coming, Mom,” Jessica hears herself say, before things start changing inside her mouth. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it’s very, very strange to feel new teeth spring from her gums where there shouldn’t be room for them, to feel all of her teeth lengthen and broaden, to somehow have all of this happen behind her human lips.

Her hands are what change next. Her palms get smaller as the bones of her fingers warp, as her nails harden and blacken and sharpen into claws. She can feel the rest of the change waiting for her, that there is much, much more to be had. There is an entire new animal that Jessica could become. She holds it off, though -- the little things that have shifted so far have been silent, but she’s certain Dad would hear anything more -- and goes to greet her parents.

When it’s over, Dad is finally dead, Mom is wounded but standing under her own power, and Jessica is a wolf.

Thank goodness they have the weekend to recover.

* * *

Mom sits down, hard, on the couch, dropping Jessica’s X-Acto knife on the floor. With an anxious whine, Jessica comes away from Dad’s body and puts her bloody chin on Mom’s knee. “I’m okay, sweetheart,” Mom says. “I think.” She pats Jessica’s head with a heavy hand.

Avoiding the spill of wolfsbane water on the couch and the floor, Jessica hops up to sit next to Mom and inspect for herself. Thankfully, Mom hasn’t been bitten (Jessica is certain Mom would smell different if she had) but she’s got deep punctures and gouges from Dad’s claws up and down her right arm. Jessica hunkers down, holding Mom’s wrist between her paws, and starts licking the wounds clean.

Mom’s scent changes minutely -- what is that, wariness? It’s not quite fear -- but she doesn’t try to pull away. Under Jessica’s ministrations the claw marks soon stop bleeding, and Jessica is able to sit up and will herself to turn into a girl again.

Mom watches the transformation closely, but Jessica doesn’t mind; she’s too busy trying to catalogue how it feels, as her urgency when she’d been fighting Dad had made the shift into her wolf form feel like falling off a cliff. Shifting into a girl feels like a hundred different things: one moment it’s as fiddly as trying to get toothpaste back into its tube, and the next it feels like the relief of shedding a heavy coat when the weather’s too warm. She keeps expecting it to be painful, especially when her bones start moving around inside of her, but everything rolls and clicks into place like the smoothest of machinery. After she’s upright and fur-free and blunt-toothed and tailless, her senses are the last to re-align. Though they’re still better than they used to be before she shifted, they’re not as acute as they were when she was the wolf, and it’s a relief to have all the colors back.

“You kept your clothes,” Mom observes. “Everything but your sneakers.”

Her sneakers she’d had to claw off. Jessica can see them strewn in pieces across the linoleum in the kitchen. “Sorry, Mom.” Sneakers are expensive.

“Well, the shoes are a shame, but well done on the clothes,” Mom says. “I don’t know where they go when you transform, but that’s a nifty skill to have. Your dad always lost his.” She casts a contemptuous look at the pale, naked corpse on her living room carpet.

“I’m a werewolf,” Jessica says.

Mom chokes out a laugh. “Yeah, honey, you are.”

Jessica has Dad’s blood on her face, on her hands and forearms, under her fingernails, streaked up and down her legs, drying in her hair. Funnily, the blood in her mouth is all Mom’s now, and it’s -- it tastes different from the way Dad’s did. His blood in her mouth, his flesh in her teeth, was necessary and right, but it was brackish with his bloodlust, his special awful brand of madness. Dad tasted like his own death. Mom’s blood is clean and uncomplicated, maybe because Jessica didn’t draw it, maybe because of Jessica’s intentions when she licked clean the wounds that Dad inflicted. Jessica takes Mom’s hand, turns her arm a little bit to look at the clawmarks. They’re already scabbing over.

“I’m a werewolf,” Jessica says again, “but I won’t be like him. I’ll never hurt you.”

“I know,” Mom says.

“I swear I’ll do whatever it takes,” Jessica says. “We’ll lock me up on the full moon, I’ll wear ash wood and silver, I’ll drink wolfsbane water. Whatever I have to do. I won’t be like him.”

“Honey, I know,” Mom says, and opens her arms. Jessica falls into them, tucking her chin over Mom’s shoulder and wrapping her arms around Mom’s waist. Mom’s arms cross behind her, squeezing her tight. They both smell like fading sweat and blood and fear, but Mom’s heartbeat is like a metronome and she’s starting to smell like something else: something warm and buttery and sweet and big.

“What are you feeling right now?” Jessica asks, inhaling heavily through her nose.

“Why? Are -- are you _sniffing_ me?” Mom holds Jessica even tighter and laughs. “What are you doing?”

“This is crazy, I can smell...” Inhale. “Relief.” Cucumbers and ice water and something herbal, Jessica doesn’t know what. Inhale. “Exhaustion.” Dry oats and mothballs. Inhale. “Curiosity.” Ink in a bottle and cloves and bell peppers. “But there’s something else and I can’t...”

Mom laughs again. Her amusement smells like dish soap bubbles and cranberry juice. “The number of times we say ‘I love you’ and it’s the one smell you can’t figure out.”

“Oh.” Jessica presses her face to Mom’s neck and breathes it in. The smell is rising like baking bread and still warm like it too, melted butter without salt, lavender honey in hot milk. It goes straight to her head. Of course it’s love. “I love you, Mom.” She squeezes her eyes shut against the sudden pressure of tears. “I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart. More than anything.” Mom collects Jessica like she’s pulling armfuls of laundry out of the dryer, lifting her long skinny legs into her lap. “You were so brave today. You saved both of us.”

“I was so scared.”

“So was I. And we did what we had to do anyway.”

“I didn’t get your message until school let out. I thought I’d be too late.”

“You weren’t too late. You got here in time and you kicked his ass.”

The noise Jessica makes is half-laugh, half-gasp. “Yeah, I did.”

“You were smart about it too, bringing weapons with you for me.”

“They were going to be for me,” Jessica says. “I thought -- all the bottles of wolfsbane water we’ve got stashed everywhere, all the silver, I hoped you might --”

“Well, it looks like the silver myth is just a myth,” Mom says. She sounds annoyed. “When he first got here, I stabbed him with that dagger we got from those druids in Pennsylvania and it didn’t do anything. I think the other times that silver worked against him, it was because there was also wolfsbane or ash wood involved. Silver is useless on its own.”

Jessica makes a high-pitched noise she doesn’t even know how to classify and burrows even closer against Mom. If Dad had been less sadistic and more efficient, or less scattered-crazy and more focused-crazy, if he hadn’t felt like waiting to torture Jessica and Mom together --

“It’s okay, Jessica. I’m okay, baby. I love you. Can you... smell me? Does that help?”

It does. Jessica takes a deep breath, then another. She’s starting to smell like milk-and-honey herself, from being so close to Mom while Mom’s feelings are spilling everywhere. Mom gets a hand into Jessica’s wild curly hair, long since tumbled loose from its bun, and scratches at Jessica’s scalp. She’s always been able to soothe Jessica this way. Jessica lets herself be gentled and slumps against Mom again.

“You know, your dad used to be able to smell emotions, too,” Mom muses. “But he only ever mentioned fear. He loved knowing that people were afraid of him. Even before he went feral, he liked it.”

“I remember,” Jessica says. She’d only been three or four, but she can remember Dad in his human form threatening fights with people on the street or in grocery stores. He liked Jessica’s fear, too: he’d feint at her to make her yelp.

“He could never really control the wolf, either,” Mom says. “He’d black out completely on full moons. He could force the change from his human form to his wolf one the rest of the time, but it was anyone’s guess if he’d shift halfway or all the way, and he couldn’t always shift back. He could sort of steer himself around and sometimes he’d remember what he’d done after, but there was really no rationality to him, Jessica. Like he was today. Even only half-shifted it’s like he was rabid.”

“I know.”

“What I mean is,” Mom says, “you’re nothing like him, baby. You knew me, even when you were a wolf. You tasted my blood to heal me and it didn’t drive you mad. You shifted all the way on your first try, and when you needed to, you became human again. I’ve never seen a shift like that, either.”

“Dad always screamed whenever he shifted,” Jessica says. “I thought the shift would hurt, but it doesn’t.”

“You’re _different_ ,” Mom says. “You’re my baby, and we love each other, and you don’t want to hurt me, and I won’t let you. But I don’t think it’ll be a problem, sweetheart. I don’t know what you are, but you’re a different kind of wolf from your dad. We’ll be okay.”

* * *

When Jessica and Mom finally get to their feet, the living room is painted in the shadows of a springtime early sunset. Tiptoeing her way around Dad’s bloody and mangled bulk, Jessica yelps and hops away when she accidentally puts her foot down on a patch of carpet soaked in wolfsbane water. It feels like the acid burns she’d gotten once or twice in Chemistry, only worse and deeper.

“Are you all right?” Mom demands. 

Jessica flicks the lightswitch by the door to the kitchen and leans against the wall, balancing on her good foot to examine her burnt one. “I think so,” she says, blinking in the glare of the overhead light. The burn starts at the tip of her big toe and continues across the ball of her foot. It’s pink and raw, oozing blood, with unsavory pale blue froth at the edges. “I think my body’s trying to heal, but the wolfsbane is getting in the way,” she says. “Can you get me some tap water to flush it out?”

Mom does, and Jessica pours it across the burn, hissing through her teeth at the sting. With the weird blue froth gone, though, the burn heals itself as Mom and Jessica watch: the blood dries, the scabs harden and then fade away, and then the new pink skin left behind darkens to a light brown until it’s as though there was never any injury at all. “Goodness,” Mom says.

“I was thinking maybe you should wash the clawmarks Dad gave you with some wolfsbane water before they close up altogether,” Jessica says, nodding at Mom’s arm. “Just in case. I know my cleaning them for you sped the healing up, but we don’t know if there will be any, um--”

“--Weird wolfy side-effects?” Mom says. “That’s a good idea.”

Jessica sits at the kitchen table while Mom puts dried wolfsbane in a glass of water. She mixes it vigorously with a chopstick to make the wolfsbane dissolve, and then leans over the sink to rinse her arm. There isn’t any noticeable effect; Jessica isn’t sure if that means there was nothing wrong in the first place, or if the wounds are too well-healed for it to make a difference.

“Are you hungry?” Mom asks, after she’s washed and dried the glass.

“I could eat,” Jessica says.

“Let me scramble us some eggs,” Mom says, and goes to rummage in the fridge.

From where she’s sitting, Jessica can see the wreck of the living room: Dad’s body, the blood spilled on the floor and splattered on the walls, the broken bookshelves, the fallen picture frames and accompanying shattered glass, the splintered screen of their TV. “How the hell are we even going to begin to clean this up?” she asks.

Mom looks up from where she’s vigorously beating half a dozen eggs in a mixing bowl. “Really the only _big_ problem is what to do with your dad,” she muses. “The rest can be fixed with some sweeping and mopping and Windex.”

“The carpet’s a lost cause,” Jessica says.

“Well.”

“And I’d say disposing of a body is a _pretty big problem_ , wouldn’t you?”

“You let me worry about that,” Mom says.

“What? Seriously? Mom--”

“You ran to my rescue and saved both our lives today,” Mom says. She puts a pan on the stove and cuts some slices of butter into it. “Let me handle this, okay?”

“Mom, this isn’t like when whoever doesn’t cook does the dishes,” Jessica says. “Whatever we have to do, we’re in this together.”

“Jessica Luziana,” Mom says, and Jessica’s mouth shuts with an awkward click of teeth. Mom never brings out the middle name unless she’s really serious. “You may be a werewolf, but you are still fifteen and I am still your mother. Tonight we will eat dinner, roll your dad up in the carpet, and go to a hotel for the night. Tomorrow, you will go to the Museum of Natural History to do your homework, and you will let _me_ handle cleaning up the living room. Do you understand?”

Mom stares at her until Jessica has to look away. She feels quite certain that, if she were a wolf right now, she’d have her tail between her legs. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Mom says, and pours the eggs into the pan. “Why don’t you put the water on for tea?”


	2. Chapter One

New York, January 1990

“Jess! Hey, Jess! Jessie!”

Jessica clenches her jaw and stops where she stands, up nearly to the knees of her ugly but extremely warm winter boots in snow. She looks over her shoulder: galloping toward her down East End Avenue is Karen Chapman. Karen’s blonde hair shines like a beacon in the sunlight and her usually pale cheeks are flushed pink above her silk scarves and mink coat. “Hi, Karen,” Jessica says as Karen catches up to her. They match pace to walk the rest of the way to school.

“Hi, Jess! Welcome back from winter break! Did you have a happy New Year?”

“‘Jessica’ is fine,” Jessica says with a tight smile. Karen is determined to give her a nickname, and Jessica is equally determined never to accept one. “And yes, I had a great vacation, thanks. How about you?”

“I spent two weeks with my cousins in Geneva. It was _divine_. Of course we came back to the city for New Year’s Eve; you know Rachel Harrison had that unbelievable party at the Plaza. I don’t remember seeing you there...?”

“Mm, I got Rachel’s invitation,” Jessica says. It had been personally addressed to her in black-and-gold calligraphy on handmade paper, and was one of several recent marks of the inexplicable rise in Jessica’s social cachet since the start of eleventh grade. A year ago, Rachel Harrison wouldn’t have been caught dead sharing Jessica’s lunch table; now she invites Jessica to all of her parties, Jessica politely declines, and girls like Karen are left scrambling to figure out what is going on. “But I spent New Year’s Eve with my mom. Did you have fun at the party?”

Karen launches into a detailed account of who from their school was invited, and who from their sister schools, and who from their brother schools, and who came with whom, and what everybody wore, and how much it cost; the food, and how much of it there was, and who ate what, and how much of it they ate; the alcohol, and who “pre-gamed”, and who got sick, and who got black-out drunk, and who stripped on the dance floor; the DJ, and the music he chose, and the band, and the fight between the DJ and the band. Jessica listens with half an ear as they climb the steps to the school’s double doors. It’s early enough that the the doors aren’t propped open yet, but get opened for them by a uniformed doorman. “Thanks, Monty,” Jessica says as Karen sails through a step ahead of her, still talking.

“Happy New Year, Miss Pearson,” the doorman says.

“Happy New Year.”

When they’re through the next set of doors in the over-warm foyer, Karen rolls her eyes. “Do you know the names of _everybody_ who works here?”

“That’s Mr. Montgomery. He’s here every morning. Hi, Ms. Deaton,” she adds, as they pass reception.

“Hello, Miss Pearson,” Nora Deaton says. As Karen leads the way to the grand staircase across the lobby, Jessica turns back. Ms. Deaton’s glossy black hair is, as always, straightened and perfectly styled; she’s wearing a red velour sweater that looks gorgeous against her dark skin. 

“How can any one person be that stylish?” Jessica wonders aloud. Ms. Deaton looks up, catches Jessica’s eye, and winks.

“Who?” Karen asks, following Jessica’s gaze. “Oh, Nora? She does look good, I guess. Who cares? Do you know you’re the only one who calls her ‘Ms. Deaton’?”

“I used to call her by her first name,” Jessica says. She unwinds her scarf and begins unbuttoning her coat as they climb the stairs to the first floor. “It just seemed rude. We call all the rest of the faculty by their last names.”

“She’s hardly _faculty_ ,” Karen says disdainfully, “just staff. She’s a glorified secretary.”

“Mm,” Jessica says.

“You’re so serious all the time, Jess,” Karen says. “You could stand to lighten up a little.”

“‘Jessica’ is fine,” Jessica says, “please. Not ‘Jess’ or ‘Jessie’.”

Karen stops at the door to the Junior Common Room. “See? That is exactly what I mean.” Jessica raises her eyebrows. Karen meets her gaze for just a moment before scoffing and glancing away. “Whatever,” she says, and stomps inside. Jessica follows, fighting a smirk.

The Common Room is nearly empty, as it’s almost an hour until the start of classes. There are a couple of girls doing work at the tables, and a girl napping on one of the couches, but all of the plush armchairs are free. Karen commandeers an armchair by the fireplace. After hanging up her coat and scarf and taking off her boots, Jessica takes one of the chairs angled away from Karen. She arranges herself comfortably, her back against one arm and her knees over the other, stockinged feet swinging, and considers reviewing her holiday assignments before class. It’s too unappealing, in the end; her cheeks and hands are thawing in the heat of the Common Room, she has a dog-eared copy of _The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul_ in her satchel, and some of the kitchen staff are wheeling in a cart of hot drinks and breakfast pastries. 

She’s halfway through her second mug of Irish Breakfast when Ms. Deaton lets herself into the Common Room and comes over to Jessica’s armchair. “Hi, Ms. Deaton,” Jessica says.

“Miss Pearson,” Ms. Deaton says. “Do you have a moment to chat?”

Jessica cocks her head, bemused. “About what?”

“Maybe somewhere private,” Ms. Deaton says. “Just for a moment.”

Jessica’s not sure why, but she feels suddenly wary; if she were the wolf right now, her hackles would be raised. She takes a quick inhale through her nose, doing her best to ignore all the usual smells of the Common Room, which, though obviously deep-cleaned during the holiday, has been shared by sixty-odd teenaged girls for sixty-odd years. Ms. Deaton smells like Chanel perfume, shoe polish, singed hair -- probably from spending too long with her straightening iron this morning -- cocoa butter, and nervousness, which on Ms. Deaton is lime and raw oysters.

Karen is peering over at them, curious, along with some of her friends who presumably arrived while Jessica was minding her own business, drinking tea and reading a book. “All right,” Jessica says to Ms. Deaton. “Should I bring my school things with me, or...?”

“Why don’t you?” Ms. Deaton says.

Jessica puts her book back in her satchel and gets to her feet, straightening her uniform, askew after her sprawl in the armchair, before slinging the strap of her satchel over her shoulder. Ms. Deaton goes to wait by the door to the Common Room while Jessica fetches her loafers from the cubby below her winter boots. Ms. Deaton holds the door open and then follows Jessica out into the chilly hallway. 

“Ms. Mitchell’s room should be empty,” Ms. Deaton says.

“Okay.” 

Ms. Deaton leads her up one floor to an empty math classroom. She indicates a student desk for Jessica and takes one of her own, leaving a seat between them. Jessica sits and scents the air again: the smell of Ms. Deaton’s nervousness is stronger now. “Well, Miss Pearson,” Ms. Deaton says, “I’ve asked you here to discuss your attendance records, as they stood before the winter holiday.”

“My attendance?” Jessica says. “Ms. Deaton, my mother has always called the school to excuse my absences. What is there to discuss?”

Ms. Deaton coughs. “It’s not a matter of questioning the veracity of your sick days, Miss Pearson. Rather, I’ve noticed a pattern.”

“A pattern,” Jessica says. Her mouth, abruptly, has gone dry.

“You’ve missed a single day of school once every four weeks,” Ms. Deaton explains, “like clockwork since the end of March last year. And I couldn’t help but observe that it’s always the day after the full moon.”

For one long shocked moment, Jessica has absolutely no control over the expression on her face. She can tell that her eyes are wide and her mouth is halfway to a snarl, but she can’t _do_ anything about it until she catches a whiff of her own fear -- compost and hot sauce. Like dropping a blind over a window, she tries her best neutral face on for size, composing herself as fast as she can. “Ms. Deaton, that’s an interesting coincidence, but it’s meaningless. Was that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

Ms. Deaton lets the clock tick while she stares at Jessica and taps her fingertips on her desk. “So you’re not a werewolf, Miss Pearson?”

It’s more jarring than Jessica could have predicted, to hear someone who isn’t herself or Mom say the word seriously. “No,” she says. Now would be the time to laugh it off, to make some sort of joke, but instead she’s occupied with keeping her eyes and teeth human.

“I thought you might say so,” Ms. Deaton says, and gets to her feet. The desk screeches unpleasantly against the floor when she moves. “Just a minute.” She cracks the classroom door and leans out into the hall. “Alicia?” she says, and holds the door open for a stranger. A werewolf.

Jessica stands slowly and pushes her desk away. The werewolf looks like she’s about Jessica’s age, maybe a little older, a short, plump, rosy-cheeked white girl with glossy brown hair. Jessica can’t stop the growl in her throat, and she can feel her canines lengthening, but she doesn’t care. Jessica is the only wolf at this school, and it’s become nearly as much her own territory as her apartment -- having an uninvited stranger here is unacceptable.

She paces the floor at the front of the classroom. The stranger watches her for a bit, then turns to Ms. Deaton with a smile. “Thanks, Nora, but I think you’d better go.” When Ms. Deaton hesitates she adds, “He’ll be here in a minute. Thank you so much for your help.”

“All right. I’ll see you later, Alicia. Miss Pearson?” Ms. Deaton meets Jessica’s eyes, but quickly looks down and away when Jessica bares her teeth at her. “It’ll be all right,” she says, and then she’s gone. The door drops closed behind her.

The stranger smiles, close-mouthed, and stays where she is, with her back to the wall by the door. Jessica stalks back and forth in the space between the teacher’s desk and the blackboard, her growl a low, emphatic rumble. Finally the stranger says, “I want to apologize for coming here with no permission and no warning. I know it’s pretty rude, but it’s the only way to make sure you’ll listen to us.”

“Who are you and what do you want?” Jessica says.

“My name is Alicia Bradshaw,” the stranger says. “I’m a wolf too, obviously; my family are the Yorkville Bradshaw clan of the Manhattan pack.”

Jessica pauses, her hands clenched at her sides. Her claws dig into her palms. “Are your family all werewolves, too?”

“Most, not all,” Alicia says easily. “We marry humans, occasionally, and of course not all of our children are born with the gene. What about your family?”

“What about my family?”

Alicia smiles and shrugs. “Were you bitten or born? Are your parents wolves?”

“My dad was one.”

Alicia visibly waits for Jessica to say more. “Not very forthcoming, are you?”

Jessica snarls and snaps at her, but stops herself from lunging. Her restraint makes it even more satisfying to see Alicia flinch back and lower her gaze to the floor. When Jessica snorts and growls again, Alicia turns her head and tilts her chin, exposing the vulnerable column of her neck. Jessica sighs, and relaxes enough to lean her hip against the teacher’s desk.

“So you think you’re an alpha,” Alicia observes, looking at Jessica out of the corner of her eye. “Big ambition for somebody so young.”

Jessica has done enough research of her own to guess the basics of what being an ‘alpha’ might mean; the specific details will have to wait. “I’m sixteen,” she says.

“Right,” Alicia says. “Young.”

“Hm,” Jessica says.

Alicia raises her eyebrows. “So, Alpha Jessica,” she says. It sounds like sarcasm, but she doesn’t smell amused. What’s interesting is her new smell, which Jessica is pretty sure is submission. It’s cloying with her reluctance, slightly off: pears in sugar syrup, gone sour. It would be sweet, Jessica is certain, if it were willingly offered. “Tell me, do you have any pack?”

“Your sense of smell can’t be that poor,” Jessica says, and watches Alicia flush. “Why don’t you tell me about your pack instead?”

“My clan are the Yorkville Bradshaws, like I said.”

“How many of you are there in your clan?”

“Fifteen.”

Fifteen. Jessica swallows hard. A pack fifteen strong, right under her nose, and she never knew. She catches a whiff of wolf every once in a while, walking in the city; she’s known she’s not entirely alone. But a single scent on an island with traffic as heavy as Manhattan’s would be difficult to isolate and track, and Jessica and Mom have agreed that it wouldn’t be worth it without knowing if the wolf on the other end of the scent trail is a friendly one. But -- “You said your clan belongs to the Manhattan pack?”

“That’s right,” Alicia says. “This island is far too small to chop into pieces; all of the clans are united under one alpha.” She looks speculative; Jessica has shown that she knows less than Alicia was expecting her to know. “He’s also the wolf in charge of the greater New York territories. You know, the other boroughs. Long Island, Westchester and the Hudson Valley, southern Connecticut.”

“And how many werewolves are there in the Manhattan pack?” Jessica asks.

“Nearly a thousand at last count,” Alicia says.

“A _thousand_ ,” Jessica says, shocked.

“Well, closer to nine hundred. It’s not that big of a number when you think about it,” Alicia says. She’s too close to smiling for Jessica’s taste. Jessica curls her lip and Alicia’s eyes widen.

“That’s enough of that,” a male voice says from the hallway. The door to the classroom opens once more to admit a tall, silver-haired white man, stylishly dressed for the January cold in a greatcoat and a substantial scarf. He’s a werewolf, of course, because what Jessica needs immediately after barely managing to dominate the first strange werewolf she’s ever met is _another_ one. 

“Alpha Philip,” Alicia says. She looks and sounds almost comically relieved to see him; she smells the way jicama tastes, sweet and crisp with sudden ease and willing deference.

“Good morning,” Philip says, with a nod for each of them. His nostrils flare. Jessica supposes he’s scenting her and Alicia both. She wonders what he makes of what he smells. “Thank you for coming, Miss Bradshaw. You may go.”

Alicia doesn’t appear to mind her dismissal. She says, “Thank you, Alpha Philip,” and skedaddles, leaving the door ajar.

Philip regards Jessica gravely. The weight of his gaze is substantial, but not burdensome or threatening the way Ms. Deaton’s and Alicia’s were. Jessica keeps eye contact, blinking just enough to avoid challenging him. Philip’s lips quirk. “Miss Pearson,” he says, “my name is Philip Hardman. I’m the head of the east midtown Hardman clan, alpha of the Manhattan pack, and Emperor of the greater New York territories. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Jessica arches an eyebrow. “Emperor?”

“I didn’t choose the title,” Philip says, rolling his eyes. “I think the alpha who originally picked it was joking -- at least, I hope he was. At the turn of the century, he united four separate territories and called it his ‘little Empire’, and unfortunately, it stuck. And now other packs across the country have done it, so for better or for worse I’m one of a Council of Emperor Wolves that governs the wolf population of the United States. What can you do?” He shrugs.

“Should I call you ‘Alpha Philip’ like Alicia did? Or ‘Your Imperial Majesty’, since you’re an Emperor?”

Amused, Philip says, “Just ‘Philip’ will do, Miss Pearson.”

“Okay.”

A pause, and then: “I find it a little stuffy in here,” Philip says, indicating the classroom. “I believe there’s a balcony on the fourth floor that overlooks the East River; would you care to speak there?”

“All right,” Jessica says dubiously. “I just need to get my coat.”

“Of course,” Philip says. “Shall we?”

He offers Jessica his arm when they’re in the hallway. Jessica hesitates, and he waits patiently. “I’m sorry, but I’d rather not,” she says. 

“No need to apologize.” Philip clasps his hands behind his back instead. Jessica eyes him, worried she’s offended him, but his expression stays mild. “Your coat, Miss Pearson,” he says. 

Jessica leads him to the Junior Common Room and lets him linger by the door while she exchanges her loafers for her winter boots. Several of the girls in the Common Room for a free period recognize him and approach him to say hello.

Karen Chapman and Rachel Harrison -- she of the extravagant New Year’s Eve party -- sidle up to Jessica as she yanks at her bootlaces. “Oh my God, Jess,” Karen says, “is that seriously Philip Hardman?”

“ ‘Jessica’ is fine,” Jessica says mechanically. “How do you know who he is?”

“He’s only a name partner in one of the best law firms in the city,” Rachel says. “He’s on the boards of a ton of charities, he’s friends with the Mayor, his gay ex-wife only owns half of _Boston_ , oh my God. How does _he_ know who _you_ are?”

“Um...”

“Oh! I totally bet it’s for his firm’s Gifted and Talented Program, isn’t it? Ugh, they _would_ pick you,” Rachel says.

“Is that why he’s here?” Karen demands. “Did he offer you a spot? Are you going to go?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” Jessica lies. She has no idea what these girls are talking about, but Philip is waiting, glancing up from his quiet conversations with Jessica’s classmates to check on her. She takes her coat and scarf off their hanger and turns to go.

Karen grabs her arm. “Seriously, Jess,” she says, frowning when Jessica shakes her off. “It’s a super-exclusive program. They don’t accept applications, they hand-pick like fifteen new kids a year. You’d be crazy to turn him down.”

“Karen’s right, who knows what kind of opportunities you’ll have on your own. This could be your one big chance for a better life, Jess. I’d take it if I were you,” Rachel says.

Jessica bares her teeth in a mockery of a smile. “You know how much your opinion matters to me, Rachel. I’ll give it some heavy thought. And ‘ _Jessica_ ’ will be fine,” she adds, with a subvocal growl. It’s too low for the human girls to hear, but it makes the hair on the backs of their necks stand up.

“Jessica,” Rachel and Karen repeat in tandem, and stare after her with wide eyes as she stalks to Philip’s side.

“Are you done dominating your peers, Miss Pearson?” he asks.

“Yes,” Jessica says, “thank you.”

“Let us go, then. Ladies,” he says to the girls clustered by the door. “My regards to your parents, as always.”

There’s a chorus of “Goodbye, Mr. Hardman” as Jessica and Philip leave.

Philip lets Jessica bring him to the fourth floor balcony, and waits while she bundles up before stepping out into the cold. It’s freezing four floors above street level, with no buffer against the winds coming off the East River, but Jessica’s not too bothered. She’s found that her temperature runs hotter now that she’s a werewolf. Combined with the insulation of her winter coat, she’s comfortable everywhere but her knees, covered only in wool stockings, and her face above her scarf. Philip, in his unbuttoned greatcoat, looks equally well-equipped for the weather.

“So, Miss Pearson,” Philip says, “I gather from your little display in there that you don’t much like nicknames.”

Jessica smiles, unsurprised that he was listening in. “I’m not very subtle about it,” she says.

“And are you usually so well able to use the wolf to intimidate your classmates?” he asks.

Taken aback, Jessica says, “Hey! I don’t use my advantage to terrorize the eleventh grade, okay? When people push me, I push back. I don’t like being bullied.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I asked that question in earnest. Nora suggested that you first became the wolf less than a year ago. Was she right?”

“Yes,” Jessica says. “How long have _you_ been a werewolf?”

“I first turned when I was thirteen,” Philip says. “I’m curious: were you bitten or born, Miss Pearson?”

“Alicia asked me that, too. Why does it matter?”

“Well, born wolves often have less trouble with control. We usually don’t turn until puberty -- how early or late we turn depends on a number of variables -- but the wolf is part of us all our lives, under our skins. Bitten wolves tend to... struggle. The bite can go wrong, especially if the person who’s bitten is unwilling or unaware.”

“You said ‘we’. You were born a werewolf?”

“Yes. About a hundred years ago, my father’s mother was bitten; my father and his siblings were born wolves, as were all of their children. My son is a wolf as well. Given how quietly you seem to have managed this past year, I imagine you weren’t bitten, Miss Pearson.”

Jessica’s hands, deep in the warm pockets of her coat, clench into fists. “No. I wasn’t bitten.”

“But you weren’t raised in a clan or a pack, were you?”

“No.”

“Did you know about wolves at all before you first turned?”

“Are there people who are born werewolves who _don’t_ know?” Jessica asks.

“More than you’d think,” Philip says. “Usually children who have been fostered or adopted, but there are exceptions. You did know about wolves, then?”

“Yes.” Philip cocks his head expectantly, and Jessica adds, “I didn’t know very much, and I didn’t like what I knew.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Philip says. He smells curious, ink and bell peppers like Mom, salt instead of cloves, but he doesn’t push. “You’ve done remarkably well on your own.”

“That sounds _remarkably_ condescending.”

Philip chuckles. “I apologize. I intended it as a compliment. Usually adolescent werewolves, including born wolves raised in a pack, are hard to contain for their first several full moons -- sometimes for a year or longer. I haven’t heard of any incidents here in Manhattan that can’t be attributed to one of the wolves in my pack. Whatever you’re doing to maintain control of yourself, you do it very well.”

Oh. “Thank you.”

“What _do_ you do around the moon, without the resources of a pack at your disposal?” Philip asks.

“I try to lessen the stress however I can,” Jessica says. Dad used to wind himself really tight in the week before the moon; it was like watching a rabid dog in human form. He’d stay up until the sunrise staring at the sky, then sleep for just a few hours and wake up tired and irritable. Mom told Jessica that Dad would lose the little patience he had. Unable to sit still, he’d pace whatever space he was in, fast, until he was panting and literally bouncing off the walls. He’d get angry at the drop of a hat. He’d lose his grip on his human face and half-shift to wolf ears and fangs and claws, frothing at the mouth.

Jessica promised Mom she’d do everything in her power not to turn out that way, and she meant it. “I make sure my sleeping schedule is regular,” Jessica tells Philip. She lets herself stay up late enough to see the sky go dark, to greet the waxing moon, and then goes to bed in time to get seven or eight hours of sleep before school. When the pull of the moon makes her too antsy, she’ll den with Mom, who’ll card her fingers through Jessica’s curly hair until she’s relaxed enough to sleep. “I try not to have any caffeine. I eat as much red meat as I can. I transform as often as I can to ease the pressure. I wear --”

“You... transform?” Philip says. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean?”

Philip sighs as though Jessica’s the one being difficult. “Am I meant to understand that you’re able to change at will?”

“Yes.”

“How complete is the change?”

“Complete,” Jessica says. “Always, when I want it to be.”

“As opposed to those little moments when all you need is an appropriately lupine growl to bend your classmates to your will.”

“That’s right.” 

“And what do you look like when your change is ‘complete’?” Philip asks.

“You’re being condescending again.”

“Humor me, Miss Pearson.”

Jessica huffs. “I look like a _wolf_ , sir, I don’t know what else to tell you,” she says. “Larger and heavier than a regular wolf, but a wolf all the same. Fur, ears, tail.”

“Fascinating,” Philip says, staring at her. “And extremely unusual.”

Jessica bites down on the urge to make a Spock reference. Instead she says, “In what way?”

Instead of answering her question, Philip asks her, “What do you know about our wolfpacks?”

“Not very much,” Jessica says. “I know you’re the alpha of the big pack. That’s pretty much it.”

Philip nods. “There’s a lot of mysticism that is part and parcel of being a werewolf, obviously,” he says, “and the alpha wolf is one such phenomenon. We fall naturally into hierarchical packs, and most beta wolves will work out a pecking order amongst themselves, but our leaders aren’t just whoever happens to be strongest or... or most popular. Alphas are a different breed of werewolf altogether; they undergo a mutation -- for lack of a better term -- that allows them a metaphysical connection to each member of their pack, so long as certain conditions are met.

“A more civilized pack will transfer power from an alpha to his successor via a rather involved ritual; if it’s done right, and if everybody’s constitutions are strong enough, the previous alpha will retire, and the new wolf will mutate.”

“What will a less civilized pack do?” Jessica asks.

The corner of Philip’s mouth quirks upward. “If a lesser wolf kills an alpha in combat, he or she will undergo the mutation. That method can be iffy, for a number of reasons, but it’s the accepted practice in less... urban... areas. There are rare situations in which becoming an alpha this way is necessary, but for the most part I find it monstrous.”

Jessica considers this. She doesn’t know what the hell kind of wolf Dad was; if he was an alpha, or a beta, or what. Either way, Jessica had ripped his throat out. What would Philip think of that? Would he find Jessica to be _monstrous_? To give herself a moment to settle she says, “And what if an alpha dies, or is killed, unexpectedly, but it’s not in combat with another werewolf?”

Philip’s expression expands into an actual smile. “You do chase the details, don’t you? That’s good.” He rocks a little on his feet. “When an alpha is killed accidentally, or with no plan in place, the next wolf best suited to the position will mutate, whether they want it or not. Often it’ll be someone with a close connection to them: a mate, or a sibling, or adult offspring, but sometimes the results are surprising. Do you have any more questions, Miss Pearson?”

“Just one, for now. It’s unrelated.”

“All right.”

“Why did you bring us out here?” she asks. “Not that I haven’t enjoyed the fresh air.”

“The fresh air was a big part of it, actually,” Philip says. “It was poorly done of me to meet you -- to have Alicia meet you -- in a closed room, in your territory, without your invitation. It’s a method of meeting new wolves that can work quite well, but we underestimated you.”

“You mean I was less submissive than you expected.”

“Well, yes,” Philip says matter-of-factly. “A little inconvenient for us, and alarming for you, I imagine. I apologize. You can keep this in mind for any meetings you might have to arrange with other wolves in future: the open air can lessen the sense of being challenged or trapped.” While Jessica considers this, Philip looks around, as though appreciating the view of the river, and Queens, and Roosevelt Island Lighthouse for the first time, and claps his hands together once, brisk and purposeful. “Miss Pearson, I’d like to invite you to join my pack.”

Jessica’s eyes widen. “Really.”

“Yes, really,” Philip says. 

“...Can I think about it?” Jessica says.

“Yes, of course. Are there any immediate concerns that I might be able to put to rest?”

“No, I think it’s really just the time to think it over that I need for now,” Jessica says. “I met you an hour ago, sir. I don’t even know what concerns I ought to have yet.”

“I understand this must all seem very sudden,” Philip says, “after your year of being a wolf alone.”

“Mm,” Jessica says neutrally.

“May I ask, Miss Pearson -- you said you were born, not bitten, but that you have no wolfpack of your own?”

“That’s right.”

“I presume you have a guardian.”

“I live with my mom.”

“And she’s human?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know you’re a wolf?”

“Yes, she does.”

“Please let your mother know that my invitation to join the Manhattan pack extends to her as well.”

“I -- really?”

Philip’s smile sneaks back. “Yes, really. Your family are your pack, Miss Pearson. Here.” He reaches into the inside breast of his greatcoat and pulls out a business card, which he offers to Jessica with gloved fingers.

Philip Hardman, Esq., Managing Partner  
Hardman, Schonberg, & Oppenheim

There’s a prestigious address in east midtown, followed by Philip’s office and fax numbers. “I’m often there outside of business hours,” Philip says, “but if you or your mother -- Mrs. Pearson?”

“Ms.”

“ _Ms._ Pearson. If you or Ms. Pearson are unable to reach me at the firm, I hope you’ll try me at home.” Jessica turns the card over; another Manhattan number is written in pencil in a spiky hand. 

“Philip... Isn’t this a lot of trouble for you to have gone to? Coming to my school in person to talk to me, when you’re an Emperor? Giving me your home phone number?”

“Nora suggested that these were unique circumstances,” Philip says. “And she was absolutely right. May I walk you to your next class, Miss Pearson?”

“It’s Latin,” Jessica says, “on the seventh floor.”

“Then we’d better get going, hadn’t we?”

Philip holds the balcony door for her, and then the door to the stairwell. Jessica takes off her winter coat and drapes it over her arm, and they walk the three flights up side-by-side in the quiet before the current classes let out. On the seventh floor, by the door to her Latin classroom, Philip extends his right hand to her. “It was a pleasure, Miss Pearson.”

“Thank you, Philip,” Jessica says. She puts her hand in his, expecting a shake, but he bows over it instead.

“I look forward to your call,” he says.

“I’ll talk to my mom this afternoon,” Jessica promises.

Up and down the seventh floor hallway, classroom doors start to open; there’s no bell, but teachers and students alike keep careful track of the time. Philip gives her one last nod and lets go of her hand. Jessica watches him walk to the elevator bank at the other end of the hall before fetching his business card out of her pocket.

She has a lot to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally got the idea for this when I watched a deleted scene from the _Suits_ pilot, in which Jessica seeks counsel from Philip Hardman, played by Victor Garber. For the purposes of this story, Philip Hardman is Daniel Hardman's father. If anybody knows of a link for this scene, please let your girl know -- the link I had got taken off of YouTube.
> 
> I had pretty grand ambitions (seriously, you should see my notes doc; I did SO MUCH math for this fic) to bring it up to present-day canon, with everything the same except WEREWOLVES. I don't really go here anymore, so I doubt that's going to happen, but I hope this little origin story stands on its own! I'd love to hear what you think.
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at [amazonpoodle](http://amazonpoodle.tumblr.com) if that's what you're into these days.


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